The physical reason for pre-shading.

[Brian]

One other point is that when we look at a model, we are looking at it from a totally false perspective.  Eg.a 1/72 model from 1 foot away approximates a real aircraft at 72 feet.  How many of us have looked vertically down on a Herc from a viewpoint equivalent to a real height of 200+ feet.  How much flap goo,Chinook cheese can be seen from those distances?

Just my 2p worth.

 

[RainierHooker]

Certainly, perspective is everything. My whole point with my post is that, even if you can't see a perfectly sharp panel line from perhaps 200 feet away there is a tonal difference created in the color that is discernible from a distance. That is why I favor pre-shading (or other shading techniques) but generally stay away from those really stark, sharp lines created by the "panel liners" that seem all the rage.

 

Here's another photographic example of one of my 1:1 scale aircraft:

 

 

 

...this aircraft, back in the summer of 2012, had very recently been repainted, maybe 6 months prior. And yet, even the very dark OD green paint is exhibiting dark lines along some rivet and panel lines. Sure, you can't see every panel clearly defined, but you can start to make some out. Again, I have no idea how you would achieve this appearance without some (admittedly subtle) shading. 

[Marvel Onkey]

12 hours ago, RainierHooker said:

Certainly, perspective is everything. My whole point with my post is that, even if you can't see a perfectly sharp panel line from perhaps 200 feet away there is a tonal difference created in the color that is discernible from a distance. That is why I favor pre-shading (or other shading techniques) but generally stay away from those really stark, sharp lines created by the "panel liners" that seem all the rage.

 

Here's another photographic example of one of my 1:1 scale aircraft:

 

 

 

...this aircraft, back in the summer of 2012, had very recently been repainted, maybe 6 months prior. And yet, even the very dark OD green paint is exhibiting dark lines along some rivet and panel lines. Sure, you can't see every panel clearly defined, but you can start to make some out. Again, I have no idea how you would achieve this appearance without some (admittedly subtle) shading. 

Is it me, or are some of the panel lines pretty clear on the red and white 'Columbia' in the background?

[Giorgio N]

15 hours ago, Brian said:

One other point is that when we look at a model, we are looking at it from a totally false perspective.  Eg.a 1/72 model from 1 foot away approximates a real aircraft at 72 feet.  How many of us have looked vertically down on a Herc from a viewpoint equivalent to a real height of 200+ feet.  How much flap goo,Chinook cheese can be seen from those distances?

Just my 2p worth.

 

 

This is an assumption often made that however is incorrect for a number of reasons. Among them the fact that when we look at a model from 1 foot we have 1 foot of air between our eyes and the model while when we look at something from 72 feet we have these 72 feet of air in between.... and these do have an effect. The effects air or any other medium have on the light are not scaled down since it is the same air acting on the same wavelengths and this changes the way the two things look to our eyes.

The well known "these are close, those out there are far away" comparison may work when looking at apparent sizes but does not work when we consider the way our eyes may see other things, for example colours.

 

There's also the fact that nobody forces us to look at our model from 1 foot away and no closer. If I want I can stick my nose almost in contact with the model and at that point I may want to see something more than what I see when looking at the same from 1 foot.. if this something has deliberately been reproduced so that the model will look a certain way from farther away, I may feel very disappointed when looking at it from a closer distance.

[IanC]

Dry-brushing, pin washes, sludge washes, hairspray, filters, pre-shading, post-shading, chipping, marbling, oil paint rendering... They've all been hotly tipped and hotly debated. All part of the fun.

 

You get it right, your model looks great. You get it wrong? Move on to the next one and try again. Or try something else.  😉

 

Personally, I don't 'pre- or post shade'. Washes and pigments do most of the work. 

[Graham Boak]

I agree with you that much of this pre/post shading is grossly excessive, but although aircraft are (generally) immaculate when rolled out of the factory, not many people actually represent models that way.  They do like to see particular aircraft in the markings carried when in active service.  By this time the aircraft will have had engine runs, a short number of test flights, been left outside for a while, flown to an MU, left outside again, taken in to be fitted with government-supplied equipment such as radios, armament, IFF, have local command and theatre markings added, engine runs again, left outside again, delivered to its service unit,  There it will have had other markings added, probably another test flight, used for local flying for new pilots (not that they'd actually be given a new aircraft, but senior pilots would be involved in their training).  By this time it will no longer be as immaculate.  Merlins leak oil along the underside.  Feet scuff wing roots.  Exhausts stain fuselage sides. 

 

This isn't considering aircraft that have been offloaded at Freetown and flown across Africa to Egypt, or flown from Palestine to  the far side of India, or indeed from the US down through Brazil across the Atlantic, to Africa then up to Italy.

 

There's a happy medium in all things, but models carrying unit markings really deserve at least a minimum of weathering.

[kiseca]

It might not be accurate for the aircraft anyway even if it is very well done and looks realistic. I've seen some models of WW2 aircraft with paint wear and chipping on the wings, the wing roots, down the sides of the fuselage, what looks like years of weathering on the original paintjob. Some of these models look absolutely beautiful and I wish I could get that level of skill. Some look very realistic and IMO look much better than they would if they had a factory fresh paintjob instead. And that's what matters to me with the models. Are they interesting to look at? Any weathering can enhance that factor, and look realistic, even though I suspect it might not be. Would a WW2 combat aircraft have survived long enough to weather to that extent? Most are shown with weathering on the original paintjob, whereas the impression I have gotten, at least from accounts I've read from bomber crews, is that the wear and tear on a bomber with mission experience is more likely to be the general factory paintjob with lots of battle damage repair work done to a standard of finish much lower than what left the factory. So it would have random patches of replaced panels where the paint is perhaps a slghtly different shade to the surrounding panels because it's newer, and has been applied with a big sloppy paintbrush. I've seen some models represented like that, but while they might actually be closer to the truth than an original paintjob worn down by thousands of hours of attention from mechanics and aircrew, the latter to me still looks more "real".

 

I asked a friend about that, someone who did serve in an airforce, and he said I'd be surprised how quickly they weather and the paint wears off them, so maybe I'm wrong. but to me it doesn't matter either way. It can be real and not look real, or it can look real but be inaccurate, and between those two I prefer the second option. He also had a great comment for me when I presented the carefully measured and applied D-Day stripes I put on one of my models. He said I did a better job than the real thing, and sent me a photo of someone in war time sitting on a wing with a large tub of black paint, a huge sloppy wet paintbrush like you might use to paint a garden fence, and he's smearing D-day stripes down the wing . So that's how it was, but if I modelled it like that, and just slopped the stripes on by hand without bothering to mask off the borders, it wouldn't look realistic, it would just look rubbish.

 

As another example, I know many leave the molding seams on the tyres of Formula 1 car models, because apparently that's how they would have come out of the tyre factory. I don't know if that's true or not, perhaps it is, but to me it just looks like a model part where the modeller didn't remove the seam line. It might be perfectly accurate, but to me it doesn't look it. It breaks the illusion of realism.

 

But getting back to the OP's question, I have no idea what actual weathering mechanism pre-shading is trying to emulate, but I do know that I've seen examples where it ends up giving the model a lovely patina that not only adds detail to take in and gives life to the model, but looks perfectly plausible as a representation of how the real aircraft might have looked. And I've seen others where the preshading looked totally fake. It breaks the illusion and the model would have been better without it.

 

If I could build a good looking model weathered to within an inch of its life that looks like a Spitfire that's seen 40 years of active service, never had a panel replaced and never been repainted, I'd do it. I'm just not skilled enough, and I don't have the patience. So I tend to stick with a close-to-factory-fresh finish with some token washing and powdering if the end result just looks too flat and plasticky.

Edited September 30, 2021 by kiseca